Red Joan (29 page)

‘Sounds like an expensive way to get around.'

‘You'll be reimbursed,' Sonya tells her, ‘and more.'

‘I don't want money. I'd rather just get the bus.'

Sonya ignores this. ‘And if you think you're being tailed, cross the road a few times and see if they follow.'

‘And what if they do?'

‘Well, then you're in trouble.' Sonya's expression is deadpan when she says this, but then she throws her head back and guffaws with laughter. ‘I'm pulling your leg, Jo-jo. You won't be. And we'll always meet in large and busy places, just in case. Department stores, stations, Market Square. If you think someone is following you, then go into a shop where it will be difficult for them to follow without being conspicuous. So if it's a man, go into a lingerie store or a ladies' shoe shop. He'll never follow you. Just remember that every move you make must be in some way accountable and then you'll be fine.'

‘So I should buy a pair of stockings every time I think I'm being followed?'

Sonya grins. ‘Well, a girl can never have too many.' Her hand reaches out for Joan's and she presses it. ‘But this is the important bit. If you think someone is following you and you're coming to meet me, then you must hold your handbag by its strap in your left hand and pretend you don't know me. Not over your shoulder. Not in your right hand. In your left. Then I'll know.'

Joan nods, wide-eyed and suddenly fearful of what she has agreed to do. Is it just Sonya being dramatic? Or does she mean it? ‘What if
you
think you're being followed?'

Sonya thinks for a moment. ‘If I'm being followed, I'll have a headscarf over my hair. If it's around my neck, then you know we're fine.' She pauses. ‘Don't worry, though. These are just precautions. As long as we're careful, there's no reason why anyone would ever suspect us. We have the perfect cover, after all.'

‘Have we?'

‘Of course we have,' Sonya says, casting a demure glance over in Joan's direction. ‘Who'd ever suspect us of doing this sort of thing? We're women.'

 

Joan stays with her mother for a week after the funeral before returning to the laboratory where her first task is to take a pile of Max's papers down to the meeting room for filing. There are more than usual on account of her absence from work and so she tells him that she will be in the meeting room all morning. The sight of his handwriting on the papers makes her feel mildly ill, the swoops and curves of it now being as familiar to her as her own. She turns the top sheet over.

There is a device for making carbon copies, and the only difference now is that she makes two copies instead of one if she considers the document to be of significance. When she is given something short to type that afternoon, she simply types an extra copy at her desk and folds it into one of the novels she keeps in her handbag, so that she can add it to the growing pile of documents which she has collected in an envelope and stored at the back of a metal filing cabinet in the meeting room.

She puts the small Leica camera given to her by Sonya at the bottom of an old tea tin hidden under a thin layer of metal because occasionally there might be designs or documents that would be better photographed. These films can be slipped into the envelope along with the duplicates while the camera should then be returned to the tea tin, which Joan will refill every Monday morning so as to check that her hiding place is safe. The kitchen is her domain now in any case, and the others rarely trouble her in there. Even Karen wouldn't dare to start messing with the stack of tins at the back of the under-sink cupboards in case she ended up being lumbered with the morning tea round as she was before Joan took it over, so Joan knows her hiding place is safe.

She works harder and more diligently than before. She still chats with Karen and the scientists and technicians, although not quite as much as she once did, and takes care to keep the biscuit tin stocked. Her typing is as slow and immaculate as ever, but something is different about her, although nobody can be quite sure what it is. She dyes her hair darker than normal, almost auburn, and even Max comments on it, telling her that she looks like Joan Crawford.

‘Do I?'

‘Is that who I mean? The pretty one.'

Joan laughs, but she does not blush as she might once have done. Her hand is no longer there to be brushed against, as if by accident, the way it used to be.

She knows that Max has put the change in her down to her father's death, but Karen pooh-poohs this idea to anyone who will listen. She believes Joan has got herself a young man, and although Joan is embarrassed by this sudden universal interest in her private life, it is a useful cover story. She does not deny it outright and so it is assumed to be true. Karen seems to be genuinely delighted for her, having despaired of Joan ever finding a husband during the four years she has been at the laboratory, and this is matched only by her delight in having a fresh piece of gossip to impart when conversation dries up over morning biscuits.

‘Who is he then, this bloke who's stolen your heart?' Donald asks at the Friday night drinks after several weeks of speculation.

Joan flushes. ‘Donnie!' she says, mock-bashful. Max is standing with his back to her, but she can see the side of his face in the mirror, a pinch of colour spreading across his cheeks.

‘No, go on. I want to hear all about him.'

Joan takes a sip of her port and lemonade. ‘There's nothing to tell.'

‘Hmm, well, I don't believe that. But I don't mind if you don't want to tell me.'

Joan laughs. ‘I promise I'll tell you when the time's right. Just not now. Not yet.'

‘Don't want to jinx it. I understand.' He takes her glass from her. ‘Another?'

She shrugs. ‘All right then.' She watches him disappear through the crowd to the bar, and turns to look in a small mirror on the wall beside her. A strand of hair has come loose from her hairclip, and as she reaches up to fix it, she sees Max watching her.

Nothing happens straight away, or at least nothing anyone could put a finger on with any certainty. A few seconds pass before he steps forward, turns her to face him, and takes the hairclip from her hand. ‘I hope this man, whoever he is, deserves you,' he says gently.

Slowly, carefully, he slides the hairclip back into her hair and then tilts his head to check it is in the right place, and Joan feels a fierce, burning sensation rising up through her body. She watches him turn away and walk out of the pub, leaving his half-finished drink on the table next to her, and she feels lost.

But this is how it has to be. She has made her choice.

 

At the end of the month, she takes a train to Ely as arranged between her and Sonya, a brown envelope tucked under her arm. The envelope is sealed and addressed to a name Joan has taken from the phone directory at the laboratory and has committed to memory in case she is asked. The address is an amalgamation of different addresses for plumbers in the Cambridgeshire area. She sits next to the window with her bag clasped on her lap, waiting for a delayed signal to be put right so they can leave the station. She bends down to adjust her shoes and her head is dizzy when she sits up again at the sight of a policeman at the gates. Suddenly she wishes she had taken a taxi as Sonya instructed.

Please, she thinks. Please hurry up and leave. Her hands are gripping her bag and the fabric of its handle is hot and itchy where it touches her skin. She must keep hold of it in her right hand. Everything is fine. Nobody is following her. She checked this on the way to the station, doubling back on herself and popping into the chemist for a packet of cough drops, an accountable errand saved up for today. A convincing errand. She coughs, and clasps the handle of her bag more tightly.

The compartment is half full, busy with commuters wearing light summer jackets and pale-coloured ties, men who glance at her as they always do when she wears this particular shade of blue, hoping to catch her eye in an absent, questioning sort of way. It is not suspicious, just faintly sexual. Normally she would avert her eyes, but today she finds herself glancing back at these men, observing them, wondering if any of them suspect her. Are there any clues which might give her away? Does she look different from how she did before, when she was just another person going to work through the rubble like everyone else, pulling together, partaking in the war effort and wearing mittens over her chilblains?

A whistle blows at the same moment as the door to the compartment is flung open. A lady in a smart burgundy dress pushes her head into the carriage, looks around, and fixes her eyes on Joan. The woman is hot, breathless, holding a suitcase in one hand while pressing her hat onto her head with the other so that her hair is flattened and messy. Joan feels a squeezing sensation in her stomach.

‘Is this train going to Ely?' The woman addresses Joan directly.

Joan's instinct is to avert her eyes but she does not. ‘Yes.'

‘Wonderful.' The lady steps up into the carriage and slams the door behind her just as the train starts to move. She sits next to Joan even though it is a bit of a squeeze and there is more space further along the bench. Her breath comes in heavy gasps, and she takes off her hat to fan herself. ‘Just in the nick of time,' she says, nudging Joan.

Joan nods, smiles and looks away, relieved. Nobody seems to have noticed anything unusual. There are no policemen chasing the train, their clipped heels and whistles echoing through the fug of steam, no detectives in high-collared mackintoshes slipping along the glassy corridor. She knows she does not look suspicious. She looks clean and respectable. Not necessarily a church-goer—who is these days?—but her nails are buffed and clean, her hair is neatly pinned up. Sonya is right. She is the sort of person people choose to sit next to in train carriages. Who would ever suspect?

She feels a small tremor of excitement at what she has begun. She knows that there is nobody else who can do what she is doing, nobody else with the same level of access and knowledge.

Apart from Max, of course.

Is she frightened of getting caught? Yes, of course she is. If she stops to think about what she is doing, she is terrified. If she were caught, she would not tell, and she knows what this would mean for her. ‘Come on,' they'd say when they came for her. ‘What's a nice girl like you doing mixed up in something like this? Someone must have got you into it. We just need a name.' But she would not give them a name, because the only names she has are Leo and Sonya.

And so she does not think about it, most of the time. Because she knows that once a thing has been done, it can never be undone. There is no going back. This is it.

Evidence collected for the Prosecution in the case of R vs Kierl, December 1946

 

Between 1943 and 1946, the defendant had a number of meetings with a man he has described but who has not been identified. These meetings took place in a country road just outside Ottawa, Ontario, except for a few occasions when they met in a café opposite the Central Bus Station. The meetings were usually in the afternoon at weekends and the times were arranged to fit in with the trains from Montreal. The man always arrived and left by train.

He stated that this man was in his opinion an alien, although he spoke good English, this being the language in which his espionage transactions were carried out. He has described him as a slim, athletic man in his early thirties.

The material handed to this unknown contact consisted solely of carbon copies of his own papers, typed by himself or in manuscript and he says he passed on no work prepared by others or by himself in collaboration with others.

Although he has been shown a large number of possible photographs, he has been unable to identify any of them as that of the man in question, and without further information it seems improbable that this contact will be identified.

 

*

 

Nick has not spoken since his outburst. His expression is blank, numbed by shock. He starts now, and holds out his hand towards the file. ‘May I see?'

Joan watches her son's eyes as he scans the sheet of paper Ms. Hart has given to him. She wishes she could have just a moment alone with him. He is impossible to read when he is like this, withdrawn into himself. If she could only speak to him away from the video recorder and these incessant questions, then she might at least have a chance to explain herself. She wills him to look up at her, just a glance, but his eyes are fixed to the sheet of paper.

‘You mentioned that you met Kierl in Canada. Did you have any notion then that he was sympathetic to the Russian cause?'

Joan shakes her head. ‘I didn't ever really speak to him. He was a quiet sort of chap. Very highly regarded as a scientist though. I remember that.'

Ms. Hart nods, pursing her lips in that head-girl manner she occasionally adopts. ‘Well yes, and a very adept spy. He stole actual samples of uranium isotopes which were personally transported to Moscow by the ambassador.'

‘I remember.'

‘Must have scared you a bit. Lifetime imprisonment.'

The words hang in the air between them.

Joan hesitates. She remembers the headlines plastered across the newspaper stands as she cycled into the laboratories that morning. SPY TIPS OFF! SPY TELLS ALL!

She had braked abruptly, dropping her bike against the pavement so that her bag and umbrella fell out of the basket strapped to her handlebars, and a man stopped to help her gather her things and pull the bike out of the road so that it could rest against a bakery window while she bought a newspaper from the stand. She remembers how her fingers fumbled in her purse for change, clumsy and hot, and she recalls recognising Kierl in the photograph under the screaming headlines. According to the newspaper reports, MI5 and the Canadian police had been informed by President Hoover that there was a leak coming from somewhere in one of the atomic research units, and he had asked both the British and the Canadians to please investigate; Kierl had been decided upon by a process of elimination. Then came the details of his arrest, the tap at his bungalow door, the Canadian police officer asking if he might put a few questions to him.